


The Hawthorn Grove

by orchid314



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Dreams, Great Hiatus, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: Sherlock Holmes had wandered far from the precincts of his customary dreams.





	The Hawthorn Grove

Sherlock Holmes had wandered far from the precincts of his customary dreams. Somewhere he had lost his way and now found himself at the edge of a hawthorn grove, the trees laden with heavy blossoms that bent towards the forest floor. A pink half-light bathed his feet, which were unaccountably bare. The sleeve of his coat was wet with dew and blades of grass licked at his ankles. He stepped on a pebble but when he glanced down he saw it was a snail staring up at him from within its shell. The pink half-light, suffused with gold, floated in a clearing before him. In the middle of it he spied–Watson? 

Watson. Was it indeed he? Was he in fact here? So close. Sherlock urgently desired him to be real. And yet he knew that he could not be. Watson was untouchable, his waking self lived far away across the waves of many seas, in London. 

But there he stood, looking at Sherlock with a clear-eyed gaze through the sweet dusk. He had grown thinner and favoured his right leg. Sherlock briefly wondered why, but he was too buoyed up by the improbable fact of his friend's presence and he brushed the thought away like a pestering fly. Watson's brown tweed suit, the one whose every detail Sherlock knew by heart, hung loosely about his frame. Bees buzzed in unfathomably complex patterns through the branches and Sherlock strained to divine the geometries of their flight. He was puzzled. Watson was on the verge of saying something to him. His friend did not open his mouth but his eyes spoke in a curious vibrating tone. Or was it the hawthorn trees that spoke? Or did their voices resonate together in the darkening wood?

He and Watson were still some distance apart. Watson framed within the clearing. With an irresistible dread Sherlock moved towards him, twigs snapping beneath his step. Watson did not blanch, nor did he alter his aspect, but continued to stare at him with those eyes. Those dark blue eyes. The air held its breath. A Sussex emerald moth. It lay upon Watson's jacket, pulsing, vibrating like the hawthorn blossoms. Above the pocket that concealed his breast. Sherlock dared to reach out his hand through the fading light. His whole self was drawn to the moth as it lay, waiting for him, and he felt as if he were crossing a forbidden border. Then he touched it. The moth dissolved into its pale greenness. The layers of tweed jacket and cotton shirt burned away. All that remained was Sherlock's large, cupped hand laid across Watson's heart. 

Alarms rang through Sherlock's blood and he dropped his hand. There was no where to turn. Watson still stood before him, still curiously mute, but living and breathing. A man. All of him so very present. For a few moments Sherlock looked back at him, recklessly bold. But then his courage failed and he lowered his gaze to Watson's black necktie and the fold of his lapel. Thoughts fell out of him in disorderly fashion, spilling at Watson's feet. How often had Sherlock seen Watson insert his hand into the inner pocket of that jacket, removing his notebook and pencil with one unconscious motion. His entire attention given over to Sherlock's interrogation of a suspect. Watson wrote briskly, in a doctor's illegible hand. Wrote as if it mattered. As if a case truly mattered. To find himself sharing lodgings with a person who believed that life was worth living. Well. The idea was at first an object of Sherlock's scorn. Then it became a faintly amusing habit in which he indulged his fellow lodger. And finally it was something without which he could not exist.

Travelling by train back to London from the case of the murderous stepfather and the fantastical snake. Watson's hair feathered by the afternoon sun in the compartment that they had to themselves. Those eyes. Those dark blue eyes. Sherlock recognised, but could not fully distil into thought, that Watson, somehow, helped him to see. See through. See into. Evidence, cases, people. As he had never quite done before. The morning when Watson had rushed into the sitting room at Baker Street, waving a copy of the _Strand_ , the edition in which his first story had appeared. His face alight with joy and bashfulness and something else, which Sherlock could not understand. Watson in his armchair, rubbing his moustache between his thumb and forefinger, the way he did when musing upon an unruly turn of phrase or a dubious client. Mary Watson perched on the edge of the sofa, Watson's arm wrapped casually round her shoulder, crushing the tender silk of her sleeve. The two of them laughing at a joke that Sherlock had devised for their entertainment. Watson in the early days, still a stranger in the house, Sherlock listening for the telltale tap-thump of his cane and limp as he made his way downstairs for breakfast. He and Watson sitting on the sofa in the firelight, trouser-clad thigh next to trouser-clad thigh in parallel, almost touching. Never touching.

What was he doing? This wasn't how his mind was supposed to behave. How was he to order his thoughts properly if they tumbled out of him like this? Like the hawthorn flowers that descended around Watson in the ghost grove. Sherlock could feel the warmth that emanated from his friend, mixing with the intoxicating scent of the flowers that roused his blood. A smile was upon Watson's face, like those from the old days at Baker Street. Panic gripped Sherlock and his chest constricted. No, no. The world was bearing down on him. He had not agreed to this. What did Watson want of him? Whatever it was, Sherlock certainly did not have it to give. 

"John," he pleaded with his eyes, but Watson was cloaked now by the twilight air. This tenderness that swelled inside of him. It was unbearable. He did not recognise himself in it. But he did. He did. He could not breathe. No. No. None of it was of any consequence. He would never see Watson again after all. He ran, stumbling in his rush, not knowing where he turned or to where he ran. 

\--

Sherlock woke to a wide view of the lake. Fresh air entered through the window left open during the night. All was bright and clear at this altitude, in his mountain sojourn among the monks. The dream of the secret hawthorn grove, old, old, older than John, still dragged against the surface of his skin. In this quiet, this predictable orderly quiet, his solitude, which he had always so elevated and prized, was revealed to be–loneliness? He knew that he was someone whom death could take easily, leaving barely a mark. It was always thus with people who had not given their heart to another in life. 

He heard the knock at the door. The servant, robes sweeping against the bare floor, entered with the tray of morning tea in the glazed cup. Sherlock rolled over on the bed, its frame unforgiving, to face the wall and feign indifference. Would he never see him again? A sinking hope. The weight of it settled in his veins and he longed for oblivion to drag him under, blotting out those eyes. Those dark blue eyes.


End file.
